Tata R10: Five decisive game, Carlsen leads by 1½ points

1/23/2013 – This round saw a wide variety of interesting games, with sharp unsound sacrifices and deep positional play. Hou Yifan beat Harikrishna, 100 points her senior, with black, Levon Aronian outplayed Wang Hao. Magnus Carlsen stretched his lead even further over his rivals by beating Erwin L'Ami. It won’t be long before the media start screaming the number ‘2900’! Full report with postgame analysis.

75. Tata Steel Chess Tournament

This event is taking place from January 12-27. The venue is as usual the traditional
De Moriaan Center in the Dutch sea resort of Wijk aan Zee. The tournament has
three Grandmaster Groups, which have 14 players and are held as full round robins
(each competitor plays against every other). The rate of play for all three
groups is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and finally
15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30 seconds/move increment starting
with the first move of the game.

Round ten report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

Group A: Round 10 - Wednesday January 23

Loek van Wely - Anish Giri

½-½

Fabiano Caruana - Hikaru Nakamura

0-1

Levon Aronian - Wang Hao

1-0

Magnus Carlsen - Erwin L'Ami

1-0

Pentala Harikrishna - Hou Yifan

0-1

Vishy Anand - Sergey Karjakin

½-½

Ivan Sokolov - Peter Leko

0-1

A fantastic struggle was the game Sokolov-Leko. Sokolov recently came out with
his book on the 4.e3 Variation of the Nimzo-Indian, so he is obviously well
versed in these variations. However, Leko is one of the top experts of the Nimzo-Indian,
and he lured Sokolov into the sacrifice 17.Rxe6?! The great rebuttal 17... Nf4!
gave White unsolvable problems, and after being down the exchange for a pawn
Sokolov was unable to create enough play. Through very precise moves Leko converted
a nice win, which he analysed in the press room:

Giri stayed true to form and chose the solid Schlecter structure in the Slav.
He was eventually able to win a pawn against Van Wely, but White’s pair
of bishops compensated for it plentifully. Eventually that pair of bishops was
exchanged back for the pawn, and the opposite colored bishops sealed the drawish
nature of the position.

Vishy Anand’s handling of the Queen’s Indian was not very impressive,
but then he started outplaying Karjakin little by little. At some point his
position was exerting a lot of pressure, especially on a very weak c-pawn. However
the World Champion was unable to capitalize on the situation and the draw had
to be agreed. It would have been interesting had he combined pressures on the
kingside and the queenside with the unusual maneuver 37.Qc2 and 38.Qh7!?

Aronian seemed to be doing little more than shuffling pieces in a strange English,
and that might have put Wang Hao’s defenses down. He underestimated the
tactics starting with 24.Bxc5! and 25.Qd5 and had to shed two pawns, plenty
for Levon to mop up the game. Here's his post-game analysis:

Hikaru Nakamura (above) employed an interesting strategy against Fabiano Caruana.
Instead of getting into a theoretical discussion with the Italian player, he
employed a strange Benoni-like system, but without ever playing the move e6.
This paid off handsomely as Caruana seemed to be at a loss for a plan, and by
move 20 Black had at the very least equalized. Hikaru continued to outplay Fabiano
and punished the incorrect 54.Kc2? with the spectacular sequence 54...g4! and
55...h3! The rest was easy and Hikaru picks up an important point with black.

The Keres Attack has been considered for many years to be very dangerous against
the Scheveningen move order in the Sicilian – a reason why it’s
rarely seen nowadays. But Hou Yifan (above) has been a faithful practitioner
of this system, and this has allowed her to understand the subtleties in these
positions. It’s hard to say exactly where Harikrishna went wrong, but
when Black’s bishop installed itself powerfully on g5, it was clear that
the attack had been stymied and that the positional trumps were on Black’s
hands.

In the Sicilians, one of the main pluses of Black’s position is that
most endgames will favor them. This endgame was no exception, and after a series
of very precise rook moves the Chinese player was able to create a passed pawn
on the kingside, which combined with the king activity it was simply too much
to handle for the Indian player. Hou Yifan scores her second full point, and
does it again with Black.

Carlsen-L’Ami was a relatively one sided affair. The Dutch player gave
his Nowegian opponent (above) too much respect and never tried anything particularly
active. Even near the end it seems that he could have tried to be more resourceful
in the endgame when he was down a pawn. Alas, Carlsen picks up a point that
was not too contested and it seems hard for his opponents to catch him in this
event.

Replay all the games of the round on our JavaScript player

Current standings

So where is he now? Take a deep breath: 2872! That is 21 points higher than
Kasparov's long-standing record rating and 61 point above his nearest rival
(Vladimir Kramnik). And where can he go? Certainly 2900 is not a crazy number,
fully out of his reach. Brace for further sensations in the near future.

GM Danny King Play of the Day – Ivan Sokolov vs Peter Leko

Ibpressions from Wijk provided by Vijay Kumar

Results of the B and C Groups

Group B: Round 10 - Wednesday January 23

Robin van Kampen - Jan Timman

1-0

Predrag Nikolic - Arkadij Naiditsch

½-½

Richard Rapport - Alexander Ipatov

1-0

Romain Edouard - Nils Grandelius

1-0

Sipke Ernst - Jan Smeets

0-1

Sergei Movsesian - Daniil Dubov

½-½

Sergey Tiviakov - Maxim Turov

½-½

Group C: Round 10 - Wednesday January
23

Alexandra Goryachkina - David Klein

0-1

Alexander Kovchan - Miguoel Admiraal

½-½

Fernando Peralta - Oleg Romanishin

1-0

Robin Swinkels - Twan Burg

1-0

Sabino Brunello - Mark van der Werf

1-0

Lisa Schut - Hjorvar Gretarsson

0-1

Igor Bitensky - Krikor Mekhitarian

1-0

Standings in the B Group

Standings in the C Group

Commentary schedule

There is full broadcast of all games on the official site and on the Playchess
server, which will provide live audio commentary of the most interesting
games (free for Premium members) starting at 14:30h for each round, 14:00h for
the final round. Commentary begins at approx. 3 p.m. and lasts 2 to 2½
hours, with breaks in between. A round-up show is provided at 8 PM server time.
Commentary is available, by the following experts:

See also

9/26/2017 – The final classical game. The finals has been relatively sedate with three draws until now. But it could all end today with one decisive game. Ding Liren has the black pieces today. It's going to be an exciting game. Games kick off at 13:00 CEST (7:00 AM EST) with live commentary from Tbilisi by GMs Evgeny Miroshnichenko and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili and live updates by our reporters Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal.

See also

7/5/2017 – This is neither prank nor clever wording: Garry Kasparov will be playing in the official St. Louis leg of the Grand Chess Tour from August 14-19, 2017. Please note that this is the Rapid and Blitz competition, just as the ones held in Paris and Levuen these last weeks, and not the classical events. However, this is not an exhibition event, and will determine the official Grand Chess Tour rankings as well as FIDE ratings of the players. Here is the press release.

Video

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